Well, I suppose I should start with the basics:
Melanie Robinson: born 11-2-76 (GO SCORPIO!) to Randy and Elinor, my kick-ass parents.
Family: We're a pretty strong family, mostly based in Dallas, TX & areas.
My step-brother Joe (AKA Vex) is keeping my deep-woods East Texas hometown, Nacogdoches, cool. Check out his page on my links.
But enough about my birth & upbringing, that's all boring stuff. The reason most of you are even reading this is because you know me as Vember, self-proclaimed goddess of all things fizzy (or fuzzy) on Alter Aeon. So I'll get to the relevant stuff...
It all started one fateful night when, after clocking out of work at midnight I wasn't ready to call it a day, and called this freak who had been spamming my answering machine with messages. I agreed to meet him at Denny's (a safe-zone.) That evening I was up until dawn with Tony (AKA Maxx) and Jack (AKA Squeak) in an all-night, They Might Be Giants song-fest of fun. I should have known better than to call either one of them back after being kicked out of a restaurant the first night I met them (won't even go into the creamer incident...) but the fates felt like tieing a knot in my life, and so they kept bringing myself and Tony together... now we're going to tie the knot. (Wedding's 6-12-99, BTW)
Well, things get a little bit interesting at this stage of my life. I had just finished high school and was out for a little fun. I had never had a curfew before, but after one look at Maxx, my mother banned me from leaving the house after 12:00 (that's when I got out of work...). This was a little ridiculus & I continued my life as usual. Of course, ye older & wiser out there know to never sneak behind your mother's back... I was promptly kicked out of the house and sent to my father's (in the aforementioned Nacogdoches). I went to college there, but missed Tony. Whenever I tried to call his phone line was busy, and when I made weekend trips up to see him, all he and Squeak would talk about was this mud place... It really pissed me off. I finally figured out that the best way to beat 'em was to join 'em.... and so I found the mud, late August of 1995.
The transition from newbie chatterbox to full-scale red-glazed-eyes all-night mudder was a slow one, and it had its milestones. I can actually pinpoint the exact moment I became an addict in my memory (and to think, I owe it all to the hawk in the newbie forest...) Life was slow-going, I kept to myself and observed. Altrius and Braccus and Wilendorf would sometimes group with me, while Cyanide and Roan were their usual joking and abusive selves... and slowly the characters in the mud became people. Maxx and Dentin were hitting it off especially well, and so on a whim we invited El Dentino to visit us from Spring Break '96...
Dentin's first trip down was less than perfect as far as vacation standards go (our plans were cancelled by a non-mobile car, AND he had to sleep in an efficiency appartment with 6 other people and one bed...) but it was the best spring break I'd ever had. Out of the experience Maxx became a god and Ayn and Stoner became builders. Having met Dennis only increased my desire to meet my other fellow mudders. Thus came the road trip in the Summer of '96. Maxx, Squeak, and myself half drove, half crawled our way to Georgia, where I was first introduced to severe alchol consumption with Kenai. We travelled from there to my brother Matthew's (he and his wife, Mathilda, are really cool folks... if they had a page I'd link it for ya) for the 4th of July, and about 1:00 am on the 5th set out for Wyvren's house in Maryland. Phtom and Wyvren were real cool to meet, and the time was too short, but we had to get back home again. By the time we got back home I had acquired a goddess (to take over Ayn's building job), a few faces to put with the names, and a new clan, VASCAR!
Building turned out to be my 'thing' and I quickly changed from builder to immortal. Kenai came to visit us once. We introduced him to Nathalie, a charming New Jersey stranger... (she's da bomb, trust me) and after that Kenai came to Texas nearly monthly to visit her. The night before their wedding night we held a party at our apartments which Heart & his RL better half, Heidi were able to attend, as well. Since that noisy night, life around here has been pretty quiet. Maxx keeps getting better and better jobs, so he has no time off yet. Meanwhile, I work less and less and have too much free time, but not enough moola. Plans are in the works for a mudfest of sorts, but for now I just work to build the mud and kill the next monster. And if any of you read all the way through this, I think you must understand what it is like to incorporate mudlife with real life. Heh... that's enough time spend away from the mud, see ya there :)
Enough is enough, get me back to Vember's main page!